Day 5 -
Choosing my battles!
I'm trying out an idea, changing my course slightly. I've come to the conclusion that computers stress out way too much when there are too many tiles displayed, and what I'm trying to achieve here fits a computer's definition of "too many tiles." So my approach will be to draw out the tiles in Tiled and then export large PNG files to import into Unity. This will serve another purpose, which will be to set up portions of the entire map as separate scenes. At least that's the idea right now. I might scrap part of that too and, although I'd still be exporting the Tiled tilemap "slices" I could still use tilemap layers in Unity with REALLY large tiles.
Following the measurements of my game map I created based off of the reference material, the dimensions are 17x11. At first this still seems a bit daunting however there's so many of these large tile/scenes I wouldn't actually have to create, or at least create anything more than forestry which would be painted out tons of looping trees. There will still be tons of work though I know at least it won't be too daunting.
My process will be as follows: Slice the reference map up. Take each slice, upscale them to the correct resolution based on calculations, then draw my tiles over them in layers, then export them as PNGs layer by layer. In Unity I'll add each exported PNG slice to their respective scenes, setting up layers, and then setting up a few collisions for the player to walk into and create scene transitions. I have a few Youtube tutorials on this subject and hopefully I'll be able to extract what I need to from them to make this work. Items and the other "thing(s)" will come afterwards and hopefully my behaviors I wish to implement will work out as I'd like them to. My limited C# coding experience will probably be challenged the most in this part of the game making process for this project.
(Apparently the uploading images feature is broken at the moment? Imgur it is then!)
The flashlight effect will change into more of a lantern effect, meaning that it'll be a circle around the player rather then a spotlight effect like a flashlight. I would get it working 90% with the changing directions of the player and rotating it on different angles and then struggled with coding the "idle" direction which defaulted as "down." That and for whatever reason the "animation" would work then not work then work again. So a small omni light it is! I can get away with this too because the player sprite is just a head facing forward the whole time anyhow!
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For bulk painting, I'll need just a few more tilemaps to create with various looping forestry. I'm very happy with what I've been drawing out in testing so far. Since this takes place in winter I figure a sheet or two of bare trees and perhaps grounded leftover dry foliage from Autumn will be all I need there. At some point I need to design a few unique area(s)/structure(s) though I'm not too concerned about it yet. They'll have functional purposes but very basic ones.
By next week I'll work on: Title, pause menu, cut-scenes. and endings (good/bad) with credits will need to be drawn in as well as all the text parts. I got the Codepage 437 font ready to import into Unity and that should work perfectly! After all that, I'll conjure up the BGM/FX which also won't be a big issue as, not to brag but, I've been working in audio production for decades and already have all the necessary tools right in front of me. :D
I'm lucky that there's a slight lull in my dayjob work and I can fit some extra time in to do this work. Kids, don't try this at home! ;)
- Randall